Basic File Editing

Basic file editing include writing to file (direct file modification), inserting data to a file, deleting data from a file, inserting another file, working with Clipboard, positioning within a file, changing file's size, filling file's data.

Edition availability: Free, Standard, Professional, Ultimate

Working with Shared Files

Hex Editor Neo may share edited files with other applications. Should another application make a change to a shared file, Hex Editor Neo detects it and allows you to either discard a change or to merge it with changes in the editor. Automatic file compare may be used to find differences between the current and previous version. As an option, all previous versions of a file may be kept by the editor and used in your work.

Edition availability: Standard, Professional, Ultimate

Searching for Data

The Find command is used to locate specific pattern in a file. The Find Dialog is used to specify the pattern to search for, as well as a number of additional options.

When the pattern is found, the cursor is moved to the beginning of located pattern. To continue searching, execute the Edit » Find Next or Edit » Find Previous commands.

Searching and Replacing Data

The Replace command is used to locate a specific pattern in a file and replace it with another pattern. The Find & Replace Dialog is used to specify both patterns, as well as a number of additional options. It is not required that the size of the search and replace patterns equals, in addition, the replace pattern may be empty. In the latter case, found pattern occurrences are removed from the document.

When you press the Replace button for the first time, Hex Editor Neo starts searching for a pattern. When pattern is located, the cursor is moved to the beginning of the pattern and a Find & Replace Dialog is displayed again. Now you have a choice of pressing Find Next button to skip this match and search for another, or Replace button to replace this match and continue searching.

The direction of the next search is governed by the "Search up" or "Search down" option.

Unlimited Undo and Redo

Hex Editor Neo provides support for an unlimited number of operations in document's operation history. To browse through the operations in the history, use the Undo or Redo commands, as well as a special History Tool Window.

Customizable Editor Color Schemes

You can customize the every visible aspect of the editor window, that is, the font and colors of each window element may be customized. For convenience, these customizations may be saved as a scheme. Hex Editor Neo also provides a number of professionally designed color schemes that you may use to improve your productivity.

Patch Creation

A patch is a difference between two states of a document. In most cases the size of this difference is much smaller than the size of the file itself. Hex Editor Neo supports creating a special patch file, which contains all modifications made to an opened document. The patch can subsequently be distributed and applied to the same file resulting in the same modifications being made to a file.

Hex Editor Neo does not support applying patches in its framework. Instead, the separate application, PatchApply.exe is provided for this purpose. Alternatively, Patch API provides several other methods of applying patches.

Different View Types

Hex Editor Neo supports a number of different view types. A view type is a property of individual editor window, therefore, you can have several editor windows (for the same or different documents) with different view types. Hex Editor Neo supports hexadecimal, decimal, octal and binary data representation. In addition, two floating-point formats are also supported. For some of these representations, it allows you to select data grouping, according to the following table:

Representation

Bytes

Words

Double Words

Quad Words

Hexadecimal

0 to FF16

0 to FFFF16

0 to FFFF,FFFF16

0 to FFFF,FFFF,FFFF,FFFF16

Decimal

0 to 25510 (0 to 28-1)

0 to 65,53510 (0 to 216-1)

0 to 4,294,967,29510 (0 to 232-1)

0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,61510 (0 to 264-1)

Octal

0 to 3778

0 to 177,7778

0 to 37,777,777,7778

0 to 1,777,777,777,777,777,777,7778

Binary

0 to 28-1 (binary)

0 to 216-1 (binary)

0 to 232-1 (binary)

0 to 264-1 (binary)

Float

N/A

N/A

Single-precision floating-point number (IEEE 754)

N/A

Double

N/A

N/A

N/A

Double-precision floating-point number (IEEE 754)

Edition availability: Free, Standard, Professional, Ultimate

Customizable User Interface

Hex Editor Neo is a highly customizable application. You can customize almost every feature or module. You can customize toolbars, keyboard shortcuts, the placement, layout and color schemes of editor windows, a list of directories that are used to search for included files and an associations between a structure scheme and file extension.

In addition, most interface dialogs, especially those that encapsulate a Pattern Dialog, allow you to change their size. The size is then saved and restored next time you use this dialog. Most dialog's fields also store the values you entered into them and provide you with a list of last recently used values.

Operation History Browsing

History Tool Window displays the operation history of the current document.

Operations are displayed in a list in ascending order: older operations are at the top and newer operations are at the bottom. Similar operations (operations of the same type) can be grouped, which is a default behavior. The History » Group Same Operations switch is used to turn grouping on or off.

Branches are marked with a special overlay icon, as well as groups. To switch to a given operation, click on it in a list. All document windows are immediately updated to reflect changes. The selected operation becomes a current operation.

Pattern Coloring (max. 3 rules)

Hex Editor Neo provides a feature called Pattern Coloring that can be used to automatically highlight specific patterns in an edited document. You define a pattern and specify the coloring applied to it in an editor window.

A Pattern Coloring Tool Window is used to define one or more patterns and coloring rules. For each defined pattern, background color, foreground (text) color, outline color and rounded edges flag are defined. It is recommended to specify semi-transparent background colors. In this case, if several modules apply coloring to the same editor's cell, it is still possible to differentiate them.

Multiple Selection Support

The unique multiple selection concept is used throughout the Hex Editor Neo. A multiple selection is a collection of contiguous ranges. Such selection may arise as a result of user's action or as a result of executing a command. All Hex Editor Neo's commands and modules fully support multiple selections and work with them in a very efficient way.

Selection Saving, Loading and Exporting

A multiple selection of any complexity may be compressed and saved to a file. It then may be loaded to any document, possibly merging with an existing selection. In addition, all ranges in a selection may be copied to the Clipboard or saved to a text file.

Find All

This extremely powerful command locates all occurrences of specified pattern. The Find Dialog is used to specify the pattern to search for, as well as a number of additional options.

The result of the Find All operation is a multiple selection, which describes all pattern occurrences. Selection Details window may be used to browse results. In addition, message box with a total number of occurrences found is displayed when searching finishes.

If the pattern has not been found in a file, the message box is displayed.

Replace All

This extremely powerful command can be used to locate all occurrences of one pattern and replace them with another pattern. The Find & Replace Dialog is used to specify both patterns, as well as a number of additional options. It is not required that the size of the search and replace patterns equals, in addition, the replace pattern may be empty. In the latter case, found pattern occurrences are removed from the document.

After all occurrences of the search pattern are found and replaced, the message box with a total number of occurrences is displayed. If there were no matches, the message box with "No matches" text is displayed.

Replace All command is always faster than a series of commands, such as Find All and Fill, or Find All and Delete. The latter command sequence is easily replaced with a Replace All command with empty replace pattern.

Replace All command, as most other commands, creates an operation in the operation history.

Data Inspector

Data Inspector Tool Window allows you to interpret the data under the cursor in several formats. As the cursor is moved, the window updates all its fields. In addition, it can be instructed to highlight the currently selected field in an editor window, thus showing you all the cells the highlighted value occupies in the document.

Bookmarks

A bookmark is a stored location within a document. Bookmarks may be used to quickly navigate through the document.

Hex Editor Neo supports creation of several bookmark groups. Each group holds an unlimited number of bookmarks. You can specify different coloring schemes for different bookmarks. The Bookmarks Tool Window is used to display and manage all bookmark groups and their properties.

Technical Support

E-Mail and phone technical support is provided to registered users of Standard, Professional or Ultimate editions.

We provide only limited or no support for users of the Free Edition.

Edition availability: Standard, Professional, Ultimate

Pattern Coloring (Unlimited Rules)

Hex Editor Neo provides a feature called Pattern Coloring that can be used to automatically highlight specific patterns in an edited document. You define a pattern and specify the coloring applied to it in an editor window.

A Pattern Coloring Tool Window is used to define one or more patterns and coloring rules. For each defined pattern, background color, foreground (text) color, outline color and rounded edges flag are defined. It is recommended to specify semi-transparent background colors. In this case, if several modules apply coloring to the same editor's cell, it is still possible to differentiate them.

Professional and Ultimate Editions allow you to define as many coloring rules as you need.

Structure Viewer

Structure Viewer interprets document's data according to some structure definition. A structure is an ordered set of fields, each of which has defined type. A type may be a built-in type or another structure.

Structure Viewer allows you to bind structure definition to a given position within a file and analyze file's data according to a structure definition. In addition, you may use parsed fields to modify data in a document.

Statistics

Hex Editor Neo provides unique capability of calculating several file statistics. You may calculate General Statistics and Pattern Statistics for any opened document. In addition, Descriptive Statistics is calculated for both modes, and Entropy Analysis is performed for General Statistics mode.

Statistics Tool Window is used to display the results of statistics calculations.

Statistics is always calculated for the whole file, unless the selection is present in the current editor window. If selection is present, statistics calculation is limited to this selection. Multiple selections are fully supported.

Connecting Editor Windows

You can connect two editor windows with each other. This synchronizes cursor movement in both windows, which is an extremely useful editing technique in some scenarios.

Edition availability: Professional, Ultimate

Find in Files

The Find in Files command is used to search a list of files for a specified pattern. You specify the list of folders and file mask that determine the list of files and you enter a pattern to search. The Find in Files Dialog is used to provide all this information.

Find in Files function operates in one of two modes: Find at least one occurrence and Find all occurrences.

The implementation of Find in Files command scales well, that is, it works faster on multi-core or multi-processor computers. Several dedicated threads of execution are launched on such computers and perform searching and replacing in parallel.

Built-In Explorer

Hex Editor Neo provides two Windows Explorer-like windows as part of its user interface. They can be used to perform usual file and folder operations and also tightly coupled with Hex Editor Neo. For example, you can open files in the editor by double-clicking them in the Explorer window simply dragging them to the editor's window.

Standard Edition unlocks the Built-In Explorer window. Professional Edition adds the second Explorer window to the user interface.

Encodings

Hex Editor Neo is capable of displaying text in the text pane according to a selected encoding. More than 130 different encodings are supported (subject to installed code page files and fonts). When the cursor is in the text pane, typed characters are also converted using the selected encoding. Encoding can be set separately for each editor window. Different ANSI, UNICODE, ISO, OEM, MAC, EBCDIC and country-specific encodings are supported. UTF-8 multi-byte encoding is also supported.

Advanced Copy & Export (Raw Text Format)

Selected document data may be converted into a number of supported text formats and placed into the Clipboard or exported to a file. Space-separated or comma-separated numbers, raw text with selected encoding, programming language array declaration, Base64, UUencode and Quoted-Printable are among supported formats.

Raw Text Format allows you to copy the selected data from the text pane "as it is". You also have an option to specify the text encoding (from the list of more than 150 encodings, including multi-byte).

Advanced Copy & Export (Formatted Data Format)

Selected document data may be converted into a number of supported text formats and placed into the Clipboard or exported to a file. Space-separated or comma-separated numbers, raw text with selected encoding, programming language array declaration, Base64, UUencode and Quoted-Printable are among supported formats.

This powerful format allows you to convert a binary data to a sequence of numbers, encoded according to the selected type. You select a type of number, whether base 16 or base 10 is used to represent them, the number of numbers in a row and output type.

Pasting Text

Text may now be pasted into the editor. Depending on the active pane, the text is either pasted "as is" (if the text pane is active), or parsed as a sequence of hexadecimal or decimal integers (if the code pane is active).

Replace in Files

The Replace in Files command is used to search a list of files for a specified pattern and replace it with another pattern. You specify the list of folders and file mask that determine the list of files and you enter both patterns to search in a Find in Files Dialog. The "Find and replace mode" switch must be enabled for this command.

Replace in Files function operates in one of two modes: Replace all occurrences and save and Replace all occurrences and open.

The implementation of Replace in Files command scales well, that is, it works faster on multi-core or multi-processor computers. Several dedicated threads of execution are launched on such computers and perform searching and replacing in parallel.

History Branching Support

In most other applications, history operations you undo are always silently deleted when you execute a new operation.

Hex Editor Neo provides the unique feature, called history branching, which is used to retain these "phantom" operations at the time new operation is executed.

At this time Hex Editor Neo creates a branch, retaining states provided operations that were undone. After that you can switch to the branch by clicking on an operation in it. Operation switching always has constant-time complexity in the Hex Editor Neo. You can now continue working with any of two branches, add new operations to any of them, create new branches and so on.

You can also exchange data between operations from different branches via Clipboard.

Built-In Explorer (Second Window)

Hex Editor Neo provides two Windows Explorer-like windows as part of its user interface. They can be used to perform usual file and folder operations and also tightly coupled with Hex Editor Neo. For example, you can open files in the editor by double-clicking them in the Explorer window simply dragging them to the editor's window.

Standard Edition unlocks the Built-In Explorer window. Professional Edition adds the second Explorer window to the user interface.

Opening Intel HEX and Motorola S-Records Files

File » Open » Open Hex… and Edit » Insert Hex… commands allow the user to convert Intel HEX and Motorola S files to binary form and insert them into the Hex Editor Neo.

Edition availability: Professional, Ultimate

Advanced Copy & Export (Encoded Data Format)

Selected document data may be converted into a number of supported text formats and placed into the Clipboard or exported to a file. Space-separated or comma-separated numbers, raw text with selected encoding, programming language array declaration, Base64, UUencode and Quoted-Printable are among supported formats.

Checksum Calculation

Hex Editor Neo supports more than 20 checksum calculation algorithms, including MD5, SHA-1, CRC-16, CRC-32 and others. Custom CRC algorithm is also provided. You can compute the checksum for the whole file or for the current (multiple) selection. Several checksums may be computed at the same time in parallel. Results are easily exportable and copyable to the Clipboard.

File Document Scripting

Hex Editor Neo provides a programming interface to its basic file editing features. The interface provided by the Hex Editor Neo may be used by any code written in any automation-compatible language.

Two objects, File Document Object and Multiple Selection Object are provided by the application. User code can create these objects, call methods they expose and query/set their properties. As a result, it may achieve the same functionality as provided by the Hex Editor Neo's user interface, with same performance characteristics. Hex Editor Neo's window does not appear on the screen when any of exposed objects is instantiated.

Support for NTFS Alternate Data Streams

Hex Editor Neo fully supports NTFS alternate data streams. A special NTFS Streams Tool Window displays all streams for the currently active file, allows you to delete or rename them, open them for editing or create new streams.

Edition availability: Professional, Ultimate

Searching for NTFS Streams

Hex Editor Neo provides you with a powerful feature that allows you to locate all files (according to a given criteria) that have alternate data streams in them. It can also be used to quickly calculate a total space occupied by streams on your disk. Found streams may then be opened in the editor or deleted.

Scripting in Structure Viewer

You can extend the functionality of the powerful Structure Viewer structure definition language with functions written in Javascript. These functions have access to two built-in objects: parser, which exposes the functionality of Structure Viewer itself and document, which exposes the current document a structure is being bound to.

x86 Disassembler

Hex Editor Neo includes a disassembler module. The current implementation is capable of disassembling 32-bit x86 code, including support for FPO, MMX, SSE, SSE2 and 3DNow! instruction sets. Disassembler automatically searches for symbol files and uses the information from them to increase the assembly output readability. The Disassembler View may be connected to ordinary editor window which provides you with another handly data viewing and manipulation tool. The disassembler module works with files and processes' memory and is even automatically updated when you modify the document.

x64 Disassembler

Hex Editor Neo includes a disassembler module. The current implementation is capable of disassembling 64-bit x86-64 code, including support for SSE4 and SSE4.1 instruction sets. Disassembler automatically searches for symbol files and uses the information from them to increase the assembly output readability. The Disassembler View may be connected to ordinary editor window which provides you with another handly data viewing and manipulation tool. The disassembler module works with files and processes' memory and is even automatically updated when you modify the document.

.NET Disassembler

Hex Editor Neo includes a disassembler module. The current implementation is capable of disassembling .NET assemblies (Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL)). Disassembler automatically parses assembly's metadata and searches for symbol files. The Disassembler View may be connected to ordinary editor window which provides you with another handly data viewing and manipulation tool. The disassembler module works with files and processes' memory and is even automatically updated when you modify the document.

Volume Navigator Tool Window is synchronized with main document editing window and Structure View Tool Window. It allows you to easily locate, analyze and edit specific items on the disk.

Edition availability: Ultimate

Regular Expressions

Hex Editor Neo allows usage of ECMAScript-compatible regular expressions in the following components and modules:

Find and Find All

Replace and Replace All (only find pattern)

Find in Files and Replace in Files

Pattern Statistics

Pattern Coloring

Edition availability: Free, Standard, Professional, Ultimate

Install for All Users

Hex Editor Neo may be installed for all users of the computer, just like any other application. You must have administrative rights in order to install the application in this mode. Elevation prompt may appear, depending on your operating system version and configuration.

Setup creates a system restore point before making any modifications to the computer. Transactional setup is supported.

Edition availability: Free, Standard, Professional, Ultimate

Install for a Single User

Hex Editor Neo may be installed for a single user. You don't need to have administrative rights to install the product in this mode. Setup does not perform elevation of privileges on Windows Vista or later operating system, keeping your computer more safe. Once installed, the product will not be visible to other computer users, but may also be installed by them in per-user mode.

Setup does not create a system restore point on Windows Vista or later operating system due to the lack of privileges. If installed by administrator on Windows XP, system restore point is created.

Transactional setup is supported.

Edition availability: Free, Standard, Professional, Ultimate

Portable Hex Editor Installation

Hex Editor Neo's setup supports installing the product in portable mode. Once installed, the product may be freely copied to other locations, transferred to other computers where used without installation. In this mode setup allows the user to select a removable drive or network share as a destination folder.

Setup does not perform any changes to the system registry and does not create any shell shortcuts. All changes are limited to a file system and transacted on supported operating systems.